In my first post, I talked about the basics of the Jewellery Quarter Pavement Trails and shared photos of all (but one! Noooo) of the Findings Trail. That made for a long old article, so I decided to pop this one into another post. So, here we have the Charm Bracelet Trail. My best friend Emma and I decided to walk both Jewellery Quarter trails, clutching a camera (Emma) and a damp leaflet (me) in the drizzle – a perfect British Day Out as I’m sure you’ll agree. It was great fun being tourists in my city, and doing something you wouldn’t necessarily do (I have been to the Pen Museum, and that’s very good, too).

We actually did half of the Findings Trail, then up and down the Charm Bracelet trail in the wrong order, then the rest of the Findings Trail. I’ve posted these in the order in which they appear in the leaflet, starting at the bottom of Newhall Hill, intersecting with the other trail at the junction with Graham Street, but then continuing up Frederick Street into the heart of the Jewellery Quarter.

The Charm Bracelet Trail

This trail was designed by artists Mick Thacker and Mark Renn. Where the Findings Trail has squares let into the square-paved pavement, this one has a rather charming (aha) brick shape which fits in with these pavements. The designs are flatter and they all feature some chain links at the top that would form a chain joining all of the charms.

You start this one at the bottom of Newhall Hill and it takes you all the way to the top of Frederick Street on the right-hand side as you walk up. The pieces aren’t numbered or lettered but they are quite easy to spot.

The key, is, of course, the start of the trail, and this one also includes the thanks to the funders.

Then we have the Silent Boot, which refers to an 1890s design of police boot designed to help catch wrongdoers. In the photo at the start of this article, you’ll witness our delight at my Doc Marten’s shoe fitting into the design: here’s the unadorned version:

Did you know that Washington Irving, who wrote Rip Van Winkle, stayed in the Jewellery Quarter and wrote his book there in 1818? I will admit that I didn’t know this.

Hooray for the reforming Chartists – a huge crowd gathered here working towards reform in 1832 and this one celebrates them:

I also didn’t know that the FA Cup was made here but it was, and here it is, looking a little damp.

The whistles for the Titanic were made by J. Hudson Limited – they still make the same whistles and they’re called Acme Whistles, which is pleasing (they also make the Acme Thunderer, which is a football thing). We loved the little whistles on the chain.

As well as a pen nib manufacturer, there was a Turkish Steam Bath near to the Argent Centre.

This anchor commemorates the Assay Office, the anchor being the hallmark symbol for Birmingham. This is commemorated in the beer bottle plaque in the Findings Trail, too.

I love these nib displays – they have ones like this in the Pen Museum, which is fab and well worth a visit. You can make a nib from scratch and play around with quill and dip pens. This commemorates Joseph Gillot, another overlap with the Findings Trail, but it’s lovely to have these names mentioned and remembered.

The Hockley Flyer is the quarter’s trade magazine and is still going strong and making interesting reading:

We get into World War Two and the Jewellery Quarter now, with this piece commemorating a badge-making firm targeted by bombers during the war …

… and this absolutely lovely Bits For Spitfires piece, celebrating the fact that both commemorative medals and parts for the planes were made here. Emma and I liked the way it looks like an Airfix model.

The famous School of Jewellery is celebrated on Frederick Street:

We also really liked this piece commemorating the Vittoria Restaurant, which apparently featured “peas like emeralds” – as we’d just had our lunch when Emma photographed this one, we decided to feature our toes (and Emma’s skirt) in the photo.

The last piece in this trail is the Chamberlain Clock, the famous landmark celebrating Joseph Chamberlain which was erected in 1903. Not sure why we added ourselves into this one, too, but it was a lovely ending, within sight of the clock itself.

We managed not to photograph the clock or the rest of the JQ, marching back down Frederick Street with a plan to get round the rest of it before tea time. A quick mention should be made of The Button Factory, which is a great pub on Frederick Street, in an old button factory and keeping a lot of its detailing. We had a lovely lunch there, and they do all their frying in rapeseed oil, which is brilliant for any of us on low-cholesterol diets. I do like chips. It was really quiet on a December Monday but friendly and warm.

Do pop and read all about the rest of our exploits that day taking in the Findings Trail as well!

All photos taken by Emma Volante, all food and drink paid for ourselves. More info about the Pavement Trails and a link to the leaflet can be found here.

Working from home, which some of this blog is still about, can mean flexibility, and that flexibility can mean taking random best-friend-days off work – hooray! Last Monday, Emma, who I’ve known for over half my life, came up from London for the day. She’s been part of the Project 365 photography group I’m in this year, and has been busily photographing the Spitalfields Roundels for that, so suggested we had a go at the Jewellery Quarter Pavement Trails on our day together. I’d seen a few of these in the pavement and I’m always up for a slightly geeky challenge, so off we went.

In true British Days Out fashion, we did this in a light drizzle, clutching a damp leaflet! Hooray! Emma Volante took all the photos and agreed to me sharing them in this post. I was in charge of damp leaflet holding and peering at blurring print.

Having posted all the photos of the Findings Trail, I’m going to split this into two posts. Read about the Charm Bracelet Trail here.

What are the Jewellery Quarter Pavement Trails?

The Pavement Trails are two sets of artwork, set into the city streets; the Charm Bracelet ones are brick shaped (see above photo) and the Findings ones are metal in stone set in a square. They were commissioned by the City Council and various funds and organisations and give an insight into the history of the Jewellery Quarter, which is all about pen nibs and other steel stuff as well as jewellery, and has had some very interesting inhabitants. You can find more information and a link to the PDF listing them all here.

Note: we did the trails in a funny order: we started off doing half of the Findings Trail on Newhall Street and Graham Street, then went down and back up Newhall Hill and up Frederick Street (to do the Charm Bracelet Trail), then back down to Graham Street and down the other side of Graham Street and Newhall Street to finish the Findings Trail.

The Findings Trail – Newhall Street and Graham Street

The Findings Trail runs up Newhall Street (from further up than you think – you need to get across Great Charles Street Queensway before you start finding them. The first Heart and then A are on the right-hand side of the road as you walk towards the Jewellery Quarter and the trail runs up Newhall Street and along Graham Street, turns at the junction with Frederick Street/Newhall Hill and runs back down the other side of the road.

The plates are all designed by Laura Potter, a graduate of the School of Jewellery.

It all starts with a heart – you’ll see this one a few times …

A – the tunnel, refers to the network of tunnels to support the telecommunications network

Note that these are handily labelled with their letter, which is very helpful. B shows hallmarks for precious metal symbols:

We liked the beer bottle tops for C – this is to commemorate a pub where, apparently, Birmingham and Sheffield chose their respective hallmark signs:

D is the symbol for a church, and we dutifully popped down a side road and walked around St Paul’s Square.

We were a little confused by the slippery road sign on E which commemorates a roller coaster which used to be on the site (??)

Moving on, these empty paint tubes at F caused us a little consternation when we saw them from the side and below, but they were, in fact, empty paint tubes.

And then G got all odd, too, with some rubber teats to commemorate the fact that nannies walked their charges down Brook St to St Paul’s Square … (this one was squashed into a corner so a bit hard to see)

H is back to normality with an inkwell celebrating the steel pen nib making of the area:

And we learned about borax at I (it’s used as a base for soldering). Sorry about the cigarette butts in that pic, it was again in a corner and we weren’t going to go grubbing around cleaning it out!

J is a casting tree, which was used by jewellers when they were working on multiple objects at the same time. I think this might be the one we had to ask someone to move away from as they were (innocently) standing on it (at a bus stop). What we do for art / photography / weird projects, eh!

We liked the bricks on K, on the corner of Vittoria Street, where the School of Jewellery can be found, and took a photo of our feet for little reason (we both tend to stand pigeon-toed in photographs and we were conscious of getting our photo-of-the-day while doing this).

L commemorates Flag House, another pen nib factory:

M was a good one – the signature of Joseph Gillot, who owned the Victoria Works, one of the major steel pen nib factories.

This is the last one on the right-hand side of the road. We then encountered an X to mark the place where the two trails meet …

… and then crossed the road over to the left-hand pavement, turned round, and started off again with … another heart:

So, off we go again with … where were we? Ah yes, N – the running man, representing the errand boys who took things around the Quarter:

I loved the notes about O, as I hadn’t realised any of this. We knew there was a Sikh Gurdwara on Graham Street as it’s quite a noticeable landmark with its orange flags and square, blue building. I had wondered if it had had a previous use, and yes, apparently the building has previously been used by the Congregationalists, the Methodists and the Elim Tabernacle. Not quite as varied as the place on Brick Lane that has been a Chapel, Synagogue and Mosque, but reminiscent of it. The O design is the steel bangle sacred to the Sikh religion:

On down the road to P and we find farthings to commemorate the mint (there are also Farthing House and Sovereign House blocks of flats nearby!).

I like buses, so I liked Q, celebrating the fact that the West Midland Transport head office was once here:

R is a curb chain, commemorating the chain-making done in the area. We’re working our way down the hill of Newhall Street again now.

T is … yes. T. There is no S. THERE IS NO S. S is supposed to be a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. The street was long and empty of too much street furniture. We looked under cars and behind bicycles. We avoided a somewhat inebriated gentleman SEVERAL TIMES as we marched up and down getting cross. There is no S. I even asked a Birmingham Guide and he thought it should be there … but it is not. Anyone with any info on this, please let me know. This upset us.

T, we found rather sadly, is some taps to mark it being near Severn Trent’s offices. Actually the taps were quite sweet and restored us a little.

U, and we’re getting close to a cuppa and a sit-down now (we did this section last) is a bench peg used by jewellers.

Electroplating was invented around here, and so V celebrates this with a plated sample which looks a bit like the new library building.

Celluloid was also invented in Birmingham (who knew?) and so here’s a film projector to celebrate that at W.

This is a great trail and very varied but I think the artist might have been casting around for inspiration here, because here’s the heart again, this time representing the network of canals, the heart of the city, I suppose, and used for transportation in and out of the area, at X:

Y is a stamped letter, because we’re on Newhall Street, the hub of telecommunications (the PO Tower has been decommissioned but I think the Peregrine Falcons still nest there).

and to carry on the theme, Z is an Actual Telephone!

Ah – we’re done, we sighed. Em put her camera away and I stowed the damp paper … but no, there’s one more, just past the telephone hub box.

This one thanks all the funders – a nice touch. So that’s the Findings Trail done … the Charm Bracelet one is shorter, but perhaps best left for another post.

I was setting up a post on my main blog introducing my two new books to the world and I thought it would be interesting to write a “making of” on this blog which is, after all, about my adventures in reading, WRITING and working from home … And the title of this piece explains it all, really – can tweaking your book titles change your sales profile? I’m sharing my experience of naming my books and tweaking those names … and what might have happened next …

Funny book titles equals higher sales? Hm.

My first book was called “Going it Alone at 40: How I Survived my First Year of Full-Time Self-Employment“. I realised there was a danger of people only reading the first part of the title and thinking it was a guide to empty nest syndrome or divorce, but it was my first book, so I could ‘leverage’ that and tell the world about my book. It was sufficiently differentiated from other books to do quite well, and I’ve had some lovely positive reviews (if the worst someone can say about your book is that it contains a few too many cardigans, then life isn’t too bad).

I wasn’t really planning on writing another self-help careers book … except I then put together a Quick Guide to Your Career in Transcription, because people kept searching for that topic on my blog, and that has indeed done pretty well, given that it’s a small book, not a full-length one. And then I kept on blogging about how I was building my business and developing my career and it became apparent that I could put together another book, about increasing your income, saying no and planning your time, plus what I’d learned about blogging and social media. I wrote some new chapters for the book which were later summarised in blog posts, and I published “Who are you Calling Mature? Running a Successful Business After the Start-up Phase” in early 2014.

I did some market research on this title, this way round (and yes, if you’ve clicked the links, you’ll notice that the titles aren’t quite the same now) and people generally thought it was a good and funny title, as well as thinking the idea of the book was useful, given that there are lots of books out there about starting out and not so many about what happens next. I asked friends and colleagues on Facebook and in person at networking events, and excitedly launched the book. At the same time, I launched an omnibus e-edition of the two together so people could get better value, and called that “Going it Alone at 40 AND Who are you Calling Mature? The Omnibus“, which was probably a mistake. Who was going to find THAT searching for business books?

Launch your book and watch it fly!

Or not. I’ll be honest, sales were not what I’d hoped for. I did all the stuff you’re supposed to do, including sending out review copies, and people have bought it and posted some good reviews. But not in the numbers I’d wished for. Then I asked again, did anyone think there was anything wrong with the title? And I got lots of replies, some along the lines of the business area not being as large, but several saying that the title didn’t lead them to think about business, but about some kind of guide to growing old disgracefully. Oh. After some fulminating about there being subtitles and blue books with graphs on the cover not generally being the way to sell comedy books on ageing, I actually listened to the advice, realised that no one had a chance of finding the omnibus, and switched all the titles around.

Do your research and tread carefully

It’s been a week or so since I changed the titles around. I haven’t actually changed the book covers – yet. I considered it, but as my motto is “Do things carefully and don’t spend out unless you have to”, I thought I’d see if the change had an effect.

What did I do?

I remembered to change the titles on my business website’s publications page, and I took the opportunity to add to their SEO (search engine optimisation, AKA making sure that people can find your stuff) by adding sub-headings with the book titles.

I wrote a blog post on my main blog introducing the books (with their new titles) to the world – it’s common practice to launch independent authors’ books once they’ve garnered a few sales and reviews) and made sure they were helped by the SEO of that site

What happened?

I sold more books. It’s anecdotal, obviously: there hasn’t been enough time to see whether this is a trend or a spike. I don’t think the sales were ‘support buys’, i.e. my friends feeling sorry for me and buying a copy to help out (I do massively appreciate that when it happens, and am chuffed at all sales, but that does sort of skew your sales statistics!), but so far I have had significantly more interest and sales.

What happens next for those book titles?

Well, for a start, I’m going to leave them that way around, as it obviously works.

I’m going to see how sales go through next month, and if they are good enough and I can see they’re going to pay their way, I will get the covers redesigned (including the covers for the print books)

And I’ll let you know!

Update – 20 days on and I’m redoing my book covers!

Update: 20 June. I’m pleased to report that as of 20 June I’ve sold copies of my books every day, and more copies of the renamed ones. Luckily, I get a nice report from Amazon about daily sales. I don’t think I’ve been talking about my books any more on social media than I usually do, so I’m putting it down to the new book titles.

Update – August 2014

I ordered a new cover for the Omnibus e-book, and the two print books – and here they are. Doing that plus creating a dedicated books website has helped to build traffic and sales – but what started it all off was changing the titles! I’ve blogged a more detailed update here.

I don’t do chain letters and blog award things very often, but I’ve been nominated in this writers’ one, and as I have my new books out at the moment (“Who are you Calling Mature?” and the Business Omnibus), I thought it would be a nice one to do. The person who nominated me is Chris Longden, aka Funnylass, a novelist who’s a friend of a friend; she writes satirical novels that are funny and make you think, and she’s been generous in sharing three nominations in her post.

So, the idea is that you accept the nomination, answer four questions, then pass it on and nominate two more writers. I’m glad that the writers can be fiction, non-fiction writers or even Plain English writers and editors like my friend and fellow-nominee, Laura Ripper (here’s her post from today, too) and here I go with my answers …

What are you working on?

I’ve just published my new business book, “Who are you Calling Mature? Running a Successful Business after the Start-up Phase”, and so what I’m mainly working on is building its visibility, collecting some reviews (including sending out a few review copies) and then talking about it. I’ve done this one in print and e-book versions simultaneously (exciting!) after producing a print version of my first business book, “Going it Alone at 40”. I’ve been working on climbing up the steep learning curve with that: I’ll admit to having 10 copies in my possession which are formatted a little oddly – for that reason, I’m going to give them away via BookCrossing. I can assure any potential buyers that the copies now available on print-on-demand will be formatted just fine!

So I’m working on building my profile as an author; I’m always looking at different ways to share knowledge, and I’m contemplating putting myself out there as a speaker locally, although that’s only in the thinking stage at the moment!

How does your writing differ from others in its genre?

I like to think that I have two Unique Selling points in the business how-to genre …

I have a relaxed and approachable style, encouraging rather than instructing, and happy to admit my own mistakes and learning points. I like to be a bit light-hearted, friendly and sometimes funny, which is something I do in my blog posts and something I take across to my books. My first book talks about what a homeworker wears, and my second one takes you on journeys through the real ways in which social media can help you – all trying to tell it how it is while encouraging my readers to take those first and subsequent steps. I hope that I come across as caring, too.

I give all of the information people need. I give a lot of information away on my blogs, and this, again, carries over into my books. I get really frustrated when people don’t tell you exactly how they did things, or you have to even buy an expensive downloadable or course in order to find out the nitty-gritty details. I share exactly how I’ve done what I’ve done, in detail, with examples from my own life. The books don’t have many images in them, but they have links to FREE material on my blogs which has screen shots and all sorts of extra explanations. I have vowed never to make my readers pay extra to access that material: it is important to me not to do that. They can buy the next book, or the other book, of course …!

Why do you write what you do?

I am passionate about encouraging people to believe that they can set up and run a successful business – on their own terms. I started writing my Word tips on my business blog when I didn’t know how to do something and wanted to make a note of it. That built into a successful series, then when I went full-time with my self-employment, I decided to blog about my experience, sharing exactly how I did it and what happened. That became the raw material for my first book, and my next year of blog posts formed the nucleus (although again much enhanced) of the second one.

I started writing with a how-to guide on lowering your cholesterol without drugs, which is still my biggest seller, and I added one on transcription as a career when I realised that I was getting a lot of searches on that topic reaching my business blog. All of what I do is basically to share what I’ve learned along the way, and to encourage other people by sharing my own experience and real-life examples. If I can inspire somebody to take the plunge and start their own business – and enjoy it – then I’m very happy.

How does the writing process work for you?

The kernel of my books comes from my blog. But it’s not just a question of copying and pasting a load of blog posts into a Word document – there’s a lot of editing and fiddling around, re-ordering, putting into context and new writing to be done.

Typically, I will collect together posts on a topic or number of topics, pop them in a Word document in a vague order, work out what else I need to write, and write that. Once I have a document – oh, and this is all done in the spare time I have in between doing jobs for my regular clients – I send it off to Catherine, my editor, and Chrys, my beta reader, who go over it for typos, errors, things that don’t make sense, things that need more explaining, repetition, etc., etc. Then I edit it again, and out it goes. It can be a long process – obviously the shorter books take less time, but I’ve put out one full-length book a year for the past two years.

Nominations

Now it’s nomination time, I’m pleased to nominate my friend and children’s / teens’ author Leila Rasheed as my first colleague. Leila has written a variety of books, and she also teaches and lectures in creative writing. Leila’s blog post is here. My second nomination is Fiona Joseph. She’s a fellow non-fiction writer who’s produced some lovely books about figures from Birmingham’s history; she also writes short stories and has a novel coming out this year. Again, there’s lots of interesting stuff on her website and blog, and you can read her post, too! Over to you, ladies!

One of the great things about running your own business is that you can (often) take a day off when you fancy it, without having to ask anyone’s permission. So I had a day off with Matthew today – we started off at the Birmingham Social Media Cafe for its fifth birthday, and chatted with regulars and newbies, had lunch at Eat, and then did a bit of shopping – new coats for both of us and my birthday TKMaxx vouchers finally spent. Our friend Ali had told us about a new shop called Char Wallah and so we popped there – do drop by if you’re near the Pavillions, shopping centre. They have a lovely little shop nestling on the basement floor, with a huge range of teas as well as teapots and mugs. A really warm welcome and they have worked really hard on the concept and design, so deserve to do well. I hope to feature them in my Small Business Chats on the Libroediting blog soon, so watch this (that) space.

We’re now finishing our day off with a lovely cup of tea, curled up on the sofa with our books and cats. Hooray for days off. And if you run your own business and don’t take random days like this – why on earth not? We can all do one every now and then!

Last summer, we had a load of work done on the house, including having all of the exterior paintwork done and a new front door. Cue anguish, hours of sorting things out, and sawdust EVERYWHERE. Did we (especially I) learn? No we did not. This summer, we had Terry in to hang pictures (only eight years after we moved in), do other bits and bobs (including installing a new floor in the cats’ toilet) and make cat safety window screens. We also had a company in to replace the roof of our bay window.

Now, Terry is pretty self-sufficient and very quiet – but you can hardly give a man 12 pictures and ask him to hang them around the house without being there to tell him where they go. Or expect him to know how tall you are so he can fit the locks on the window screens. And the roofing men, while efficient and good workmen, sang. Constant snatches of popular tunes and TV theme tunes from the 1920s through to now.

It wasn’t M’s fault, it was probably my fault: there was an assumption that because I’m at home all day, I can project manage these things. As I said, did I learn nothing from last summer?

Last week, I did the usual 34 or so hours of paid work. All I can say is, it was handy that M was away for work, because I had the whole of Monday and over half of Tuesday with the roofing men banging and whistling, and most of Wednesday needing to be on hand at various intervals to demonstrate my ability to reach fixings on the frames (I did have tranches of time when I could get on with stuff that day, thanks to Terry’s ability to refrain from singing while working). I had work in which can’t really be done on a laptop, and I certainly needed to be around as the roof men were an unknown quantity and I needed to be on hand for Terry. So, to cut a long story short, I ended up working really late on several evenings in the week, and most of the weekend, two things that I normally pride myself on not having to do any more.

Yes, it’s good to be able to be flexible. No, I don’t feel that I’ve been taken advantage of, apart from by myself. But being flexible because you like a flexible lifestyle or have one dentist appointment at a time unpopular for office workers and working all the hours there are because you’ve booked in too many other responsibilities during the day are two different things.

A picture hanging on the actual wall!

Next time we have work done, we’re going to do this: (a) arrange for me to book some actual time off to look after it, (b) arrange for M to have some time off work to manage at least part of it while I work. I will also try to make sure I have work that I can do with a laptop when I’ve got potentially noisy workmen in.

Well, it’s all part of the learning process, I suppose. How do you manage this kind of thing? Are you put upon, or do you bring it upon yourself?

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Louise Harnby’s book, “Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers” is a must-read for anyone considering going into this line of business. In fact, there is a great deal of useful general information in the book that would be useful for anyone looking to start their own business.

The book is packed with useful advice on working out what you want to do, formulating a business plan, building a customer base, networking, using social media, etc. It’s peppered throughout with real-life examples from a handful of other editors, who are working in fields as diverse as genre fiction editing, STM publishing and academic articles, as well as Louise’s own experiences and some longer case studies at the end. There’s a great resource guide with loads of links to useful blogs, pages and reference materials (I was chuffed to see a link to my blog in the resource guide, which I hadn’t expected!).

Although I’m obviously an experienced editor (etc.) who has been running a business for some time, I found it useful for two reasons. One, it’s always gratifying to know you did the right thing when you started out, and indeed I have done much of what is recommended here. Two, I learned a few things, which is always nice, specifically about some editing software that makes the job easier (which I will hopefully be getting hold of and reviewing on here at some stage), and about how to embed downloadable pdfs into your website. It’s never too late to learn something new!

There was lots more to recognise, too, such as the emphasis on other editors being colleagues, not competitors, and the advice to use what you’ve learned in your previous jobs and life experience to deepen and broaden your offering as a freelance editor. I also realised how lucky I was to come into the work having learnt my trade in various jobs in the past, and how lucky I was to build the business pretty much by word of mouth and advertising on one or two sites, plus using social media. Things can be a lot more daunting than that, and I appreciate how lucky I’ve been that everything came together at the right time.

As regular readers will know, I’ve written a book about starting your own business myself recently. I think this book and mine complement each other very well – this is about hard facts, research and the resources you need to get there, whereas mine is more a collection of experiences and lessons learned along the way, along with coverage of other areas such as what to do when you’re ill and what to wear in the home office. There’s also a great deal of information about training courses in editing and proofreading and the professional organisations, as befits a book published in association with the Publishing Training Centre. So I’m not shooting myself in the foot by shouting loud about how very good and useful this book of Louise’s is: it’s excellent and I wish it had been around 4 years ago when I was setting up Libro. I will certainly recommend it to new editorial colleagues and more experienced colleagues who might want to pick up additional information on training, networking or social media, for example.

More information about the book on Louise’s website, which includes links to the various places where you can buy the book.